Khufiya review: Vishal Bhardwaj’s spy thriller offers sparks but fizzles in execution
Vishal Bhardwaj’s Netflix debut falters despite stellar performances by Tabu and Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon
There is one thing Vishal Bhardwaj gets really right in Khufiya — the pairing of frequent collaborator Tabu and Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon as the film’s two central protagonists. It’s certainly not an easy task to be in the same frame as Tabu, an actor who can command screen presence so effortlessly that it makes everything and everyone else look minor in comparison. But there is something about the coquettish feral energy that Badhon (of Rehana fame) brings to the proceedings — formidably matching Tabu’s cachet as a performer — that allows Khufiya to keep its mystery alive even when the cards have long been laid out.
Every interaction between the two women feels like a tease, simultaneously revealing and withholding the film’s true intentions. In one of Khufiya’s best scenes, for instance, Tabu and Badhon breathe down each other’s necks, wrestling with the politics of survival and pleasure inside a cramped kitchen with a glint in their eyes. It’s oddly thrilling and sexy to see desire between two women placed so within their reach and squarely outside of it. It is also then a pity that Khufiya has so little of this energy going on for it otherwise, underutilising its own genius of getting these two women in the same frame.
Never matches the promise of its premise
Loosely based on Amar Bhushan’s Escape to Nowhere, the 2012 book that recounted a tense mission mounted by Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s foreign intelligence agency, to capture a double agent, Khufiya builds on the premise with its own web of betrayals, secrets, gender reversal and unforgiving lovers. Adapted for the screen by Bhardwaj and Rohan Narula, the film operates in two timelines across India, Bangladesh, and America.
The coquettish feral energy of Badhon matches Tabu’s cachet as a performer; it allows Khufiya to keep its mystery alive even when the cards have long been laid out.
Set in 2004, Khufiya opens with a failed mission that leads to the death of a secret spy (Badhon) working for Indian intelligence officers. Her death leaves her handler Krishna Mehra (Tabu) distraught, prompting the agency to investigate the mole (Ali Fazal) selling defense secrets to a country working against India’s interests. As KM leads the risky mission to track him down, it forces her to grapple with the complexities of her dual identity as a loyal spy and grieving lover.
On paper, Khufiya has nearly everything going for it but onscreen, the clunky screenplay leaves the film lacking on several fronts. Over its bloated 158 runtime, the film never manages to match the promise of its premise. Even though Khufiya marks the first time that Bhardwaj — inarguably one of the finest storytellers in the country — helms a spy thriller, the writer-director seems more interested in treating the film as a drama. The pacing, as a result, is more slow-burn than nimble. It feels devoid of the characteristic Bhardwaj surefootedness — the deception is fairly straightforward and the characters come across as one-note, even when they are seemingly double-crossing each other with abandon.
Undercutting two main narratives is the marital drama that unfolds between a devoted wife (Wamiqa Gabbi), who ends up as an unwitting accomplice and pawn for her disloyal husband, a mole (Ali Fazal)
It tells more than it shows
Although there are hints of both The Lives of Others (2006) and Raazi (2018) in Bhardwaj’s vision for Khufiya, it doesn’t quite possess a distinctive identity. By that I simply mean that it tries to fit in too many films (and certainly too many songs) in one film. On the one hand, there’s the character study of an ambitious woman concealing parts of herself from her son to reclaim her own identity, on the other, there’s the love-story unfolding in the margins of memories between two women who notice each other more than they care to admit.
Undercutting both these narratives is the marital drama that unfolds between a devoted wife (Wamiqa Gabbi), who ends up as an unwitting accomplice and pawn for her disloyal husband. Even the moodiness of the film (the lensing is by Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi) feels distracted by itself. Indeed, the juggling act proves to be a vital ingredient for Khufiya to fire on all fronts. It’s exactly what the film sorely misses, resulting in the kind of storytelling that feels abrupt, rushed and ultimately unrewarding.
I suppose the most surprising thing about Khufiya — the film also marks Bhardwaj’s Netflix debut — is that it tells more than it shows. Characters talk about all kinds of things, content in exposing their feelings rather than feeling them in the first place. As a filmmaker, Bhardwaj has been so far adept in depicting complex human emotions as clinical business negotiations. He is also no stranger to turning matters of the heart into delicious comedy. Khufiya is bereft of all those light touches. Even ideas of patriotism are dealt with so unimaginatively that they end up making a stronger case for Meghna Gulzar’s brilliance in Raazi.